Secret Retreats is a collection of unique properties and experiences – including boutique hotels, yachts and riverboats, lodges, villas and camps– located across Asia. A community of independent hoteliers passionate about creating and sharing special moments with guests curious to discover the “essence of Asia”.

Secret Villas

Beautiful in design and perfectly located our Secret Villas are ideal if you are looking to rent an exclusive holiday home in an exotic Asian location with family, or a group of friends, or for a special private function.

Designed, built and adorned with precious artefacts by passionate owners for their own personal use, each of these non-commercial dwellings is a unique sanctuary. Available in varying sizes, for both short and long term stays, each full-service villa includes a private chef, butler service, and other enticing amenities.

Secret Tables - creative local flavors

Every destination in Asia has a handful of magical restaurants usually known only to the locals or the seriously epicurious, these are the Secret Tables. Like a personal recommendation from a friend you can trust, discover our collection of unique, personally handpicked independent restaurants whose core values embrace sustainability, fair wages and career paths for young local people.

Travel Packages

If you are looking for inspirations for travels, we have designed some itineraries and packages enhancing the essentials for each destination. Our hosts live on site and open their door to welcome you! Whether you travel solo, in couple, in family or with friends, we strive to offer you memorable experiences and to travel differently, through the heart of Asia.

After many years of cooking exclusively Thai food professionally, husband and wife team Chef Bee Satongun (Thai) and Australian-born Chef Jason Bailey opened their first outlet of Paste Bangkok Thai restaurant in 2013. Their reinterpreted Thai menu quickly became one of the best tables in Bangkok earning them 1*Michelin, Asia Best 50 Restaurant, Bangkok Top Tables, Best Female Chef Asia plus other accolades.
The decision to open Paste in Luang Prabang in 2018 stems from a strong desire to pay tribute to the origins of Thai food, and engage more closely with Chef Bee’s roots hearkening back to the hill tribes of Laos. Paste in Luang Prabang is a deeply emotional experience for Chef Bee as the hill country of Laos is her true ancestral home. The next step to open in Vientiane in 2019, was simply a logical continuation. With three award-winning restaurants across Thailand and Laos, the chef duo aim to push further and deeper into uncovering regional cuisine, leveraging the systems, creativity and loyal teams they have built over the years.

Paste Bangkok

Paste Bangkok

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Paste Bangkok serves an Heirloom Thai cuisine and showcases a study in Thai culinary history. The dishes on the menu are modern in style, yet traditional in roots, and based on extremely high-quality ingredients paired with an acute knowledge of flavour, balance and composition. The chef’s goal is to cater to a Thai palette and not to adapt the tastes and profiles of their dishes to necessarily accommodate to foreigners or tourists, which translates in bolder tastes, not necessarily spicy, but rather packed with flavours, spices, herbs, and even flowers. Dishes are designed to be brought to the table and shared with rice. Three tasting menu options are also offered.
Chef Bee Satongun was recently awarded Best Female Chef in Asia, 2018, and Paste was recently listed as one of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2018.

Paste Luang Prabang

Paste Luang Prabang

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In Luang Prabang, Paste serves a creative plant-based Lao Food. The cuisine is an historical Lao food, built on the recipes of the great Phia Sing, adhering 80% to his authentic historical Lao recipes, whilst employing 20% creativity to layer and shape the dishes into modern masterpieces. The hill country of Laos is true ancestral home of Chef Bee, and thus the connection to the land runs deep and strong.

Hotel Facilities & Highlights

The cuisine at Paste is focused upon authenticity and history: authentic Thai in Bangkok and Vientiane, and authentic Laotian in Luang Prabang. The team injects art and creativity into the form of the dishes, but the flavour stays true to the original recipes, with careful selection of high-quality ingredients and preparation techniques.

Bee Satongun

The Chef & the Brigade

“I like to say that my cuisine is an emotive layering of flavours, textures and modern presentation, while remaining deeply grounded in the ingredients, techniques and authentic flavours of heirloom Thai cuisine. Or Lao cuisine for our Luang Prabang restaurant. After 32 years of Thai cooking, my passion is still to awaken people to the elegance of historical Thai cuisine, or to rediscover with me the true flavours of Lao cuisine.
In all dishes I create, I like to coax maximum flavour from a given set of ingredients while ensuring that the flavour and personality of each individual component shines through brightly. None of this would be possible without constant, focused historical research, scouring through beautiful old cookbooks and journals to discover ingredients and techniques long forgotten. And then travelling to meet growers and suppliers and salt refiners across the many provinces of Thailand and Laos, where nearly-forgotten ingredients are still cultivated and foraged, and traditional techniques still produce incredible subterranean salts. Old flavours are resurrected, and then flow through a process of testing and refinement which both brings back the past, and also reinvents it. I have a rebellious, creative personality, dedicated to learning what has created and influenced the amazing landscape of Thai culinary history, from the palaces, to the villages. It is this adventure-some spirit, fascination with fresh, high quality ingredients and respect for the culinary dynasty of the past which gives the dishes at Paste their uniqueness.”

“Awarded 1 Michelin Star in 2018, Paste Bangkok serves dishes adapted from Royal Thai recipes and ancient family home recipes with Thai regional influences. Chef-owners Bongkoch ‘Bee’ Satongun and her husband Jason Bailey have spent years painstakingly studying and chronicling the evolution of Thai cuisine, discovering century-old recipes and long-forgotten techniques in the process. The restaurant is located in the very centre of Ratchaprasong district, in Gaysorn Village.”